UC San Diego opening huge engineering center

The new UCSD Engineering complex will open next week. It was designed to get early morning light in many of the rooms, and will house many large scale research projects, including airline safety projects and Predator drones.

The new UCSD Engineering complex will open next week. It was designed to get early morning light in many of the rooms, and will house many large scale research projects, including airline safety projects and Predator drones. (Peggy Peattie)

UC San Diego’s already large Jacobs School of Engineering will become even bigger Friday with the opening of an $83 million center whose researchers work in areas ranging from aircraft design to the testing of medical devices, the 3-D printing of blood vessels and creation of all manner of artwork.

The 183,000 square-foot Structural and Materials Engineering (SME) building becomes the third-largest research facility at Jacobs, a nationally-ranked engineering school whose enrollment increased by 1,000 students in just the past two years. The center, built almost entirely with public money, is loosely designed after Bauhaus, a German university famous for blending science, engineering and the arts.

UCSD

Frieder Seible, dean of Jacobs School of Engineering

Frieder Seible, dean of Jacobs School of Engineering (UCSD)

“We need this building because we’re still in growth mode,” said Frieder Seible, the engineering school’s dean and a structural engineer whose research focuses on bridge design. “In difficult economic times, more students enroll in engineering because there’s still the possibility of a well-paying job at the end of four years.

“And we are bringing together four seemingly disparate disciplines in one place. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that.”

Those disciplines are structural engineering, materials and nanoengineering, medical device research, as well as the visual arts, which broadly includes drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video and the computer arts.

“I am hopeful that people from the visual arts will help stir the imagination,” Seible said. “Engineering can be nerdy. This could make people more outgoing, creative and imaginative.”

Highlights of some of the center’s research

Boeing

The Boeing Dreamliner

The Boeing Dreamliner (Boeing)

Composite Aviation Safety Center: The University of California San Diego is expanding its work on the design and manufacturing of test parts for aircraft, particularly composite materials for such things as a section of a fuselage, landing gear and wings. Engineers will embed sensors in the parts to examine how they handle loading stress from everything from hailstones to baggage handlers. The data will be used to design safer, lighter aircraft. The new building includes a 14-foot tall high-bay where engineers can work on aircraft parts, sections of drones and satellites.

UCSD

UCSD engineers shook a five-story toward at its Scripps Ranch site while simulating quakes of various sizes.

UCSD engineers shook a five-story toward at its Scripps Ranch site while simulating quakes of various sizes. (UCSD)

Earthquake engineering: The new building will house earthquake engineers who have been doing such things as using a shake table in Scripps Ranch to simulate the impact of earthquakes on large structures, including a $5 million five-story building that was partly outfitted as a hospital. They’ve also tested portions of bridges and wind turbines.

Wikipedia Commons

Artist's rendering of the DDG-1000 destroyer. The first two ships in the class might be stationed in San Diego.

Artist's rendering of the DDG-1000 destroyer. The first two ships in the class might be stationed in San Diego. (Wikipedia Commons)

Warship design: Jacobs engineers are doing conceptual designs of the steel connections on the deckhouse of the Navy’s new Zumwalt-class destroyer. The research is part of a much larger effort by UC San Diego to make vessels, vehicles, buildings and bridges more resistant to extreme forces, particularly bombs and other explosive devices. The university operates a blast simulator at Scripps Ranch that was built as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Tissue engineering: The physical damage caused by a heart attack is one of the most serious problems in medicine. Scar tissue claims many lives. UC San Diego is working on a solution that would allow doctors to print three-dimensional heart tissue for individual patients out of a soft, hydrogel that safely mimics human tissue. Shaochen Chen, one of the university’s nanoengineers, has had some success printing vascular tissue on the microscale, which is needed to imitate blood vessels and capillaries. Such vasculature is essential to advance regenerative medicine.

Center for Medical Device and Instrumentation: Engineers are trying to create simulations of blood flow that could lead to improvements in the design of a cardiac pump for children born with heart defects. The work is part of efforts to incorporate advances in genetics, computing and bioengineering into the design and manufacture of medical devices, which is one of San Diego County’s largest industries.

Nanobiosensor and Nanobioelectronics Lab: Jacobs engineers are working on a biofuel cell that could generate power from sewage, urine and other waste-water sources. That power, in turn, would be used to aide soldiers and Marines in the field. This biofuel cell is being designed to meet a need for lightweight mobile power, particularly for recharging soldiers’ electronic devices such as night vision goggles, GPS systems and radios.

Nanomotors Lab: This lab is involved in the design of powerful nanomachines for a broad range of practical biomedical and environmental applications, ranging from microbullets that could roam the body and deliver medicine directly to a cancerous tumor or other diseased tissue to nanosubmarines for cleanup of oil spills and capture and removal of nerve-agent pesticides.

Visual arts: Labs, studios and a gallery from the Department of Visual Arts are being placed in the building, partly to create synergy. Artists will be exposed to new materials that they might be able to use in their artwork. The department also will host activities from the new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, a think tank where people will explore how imagination is involved in such areas as technology, sociology, medicine, politics, literature and science fiction.

Key donor: Cymer of San Diego, which makes light sources for chipmakers, donated $500,000 for a three-story conference center in the new building.